Some of those family emotions run so dang deep, and can pop out at the worst possible times. You know my own family ties have been strained a lot of late, but the funeral a few weeks back put some things into perspective for me. I came home from that wondering why I live so far away from people that I do fundamentally care about, even if we quibble and have fundamental philosophical disagreements about things (sometimes a lot). And how to find ways to bridge that gap in ways that ALL of us can work with. So we’re tentatively planning to fly down there for a visit over Mother’s Day weekend, and my folks are planning to come up here this summer. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, I’m sending my brother and his family a bunch of videos about “life on the farm” so that we can reconnect with them and they can share in at least part of what we do here. Then last night my DH and I were talking about some of his family stuff, and his is so painful he just shuts it down rather than dealing with those still-raw edges, even after several decades. Potent stuff.

But I can say that I’m absolutely confident that you and your DH will eventually figure out how to secure DMIL’s better living quarters, no matter what SIL throws out next. And I know that WHEN SIL finally makes the wrong move and lands in jail, we’ll all be doing the Snoopy Dance with you. Hang in there.